Of
“Cultural” Crimes and Denials
By Haideh Moghissi and Shahrzad Mojab

A zealot Muslim
father killed her daughter in Toronto in a rage over her refusal to wear hijab.
Racist Muslim-phobes had a field day; Islamist leaders denied that this tragedy
had anything to do with Islam; and many Canadian feminists, human rights
activists, and the left stayed silent in order not to be accused of
Islamophobia or racism.

Media reports
and commentaries, ranged from a few unconditional condemnations of this
horrific act of patriarchal violence and the cultural and religious beliefs
behind it to a cautious disapproval, insisting that this is only another
example in the general pattern of violence against women. Still others
identifying this as an isolated case, warned us not to jump into any
conclusions.

No doubt,
violence against women is a cross-cultural social problem rooted in patriarchal
control of women. In this case, it used religious justification, Islamic moral
codes of conduct, to take life out of a teen who had rebelled against the
forceful imposition of a dress-code that her father saw as central to his
faith.

The fact is
that in Canada we are facing a very serious and growing problem of the rise of
religious zealotry. Canadian multiculturalism, failing to combat racism and
Muslim-phobia, is gradually moving towards adopting faith-based
multiculturalism, allowing the formation of cultural ghettoes immune from
social and legal scrutiny against violations of human rights. This politics
serves the interests of conservative Muslim leaders. Enjoying the formal
recognition by different levels of government, they openly reject civic norms
of conduct, and preach their obscurantist and rigid understanding of “piety”
and “modesty” to an audience that struggles to adjust to life in the diaspora.

The comments
made by some religious leaders in a press conference, in the aftermath of Aqsa
Pervez’s murder, were quite instructive. They indirectly supported the act by
warning that culture cannot supersede religion and urged that their followers
should “convince” their daughters to wear hijab.

Aqsa Pervez’s
case represents a revealing example of the lives of many children of Muslim
immigrants who came to Canada predominantly in the 1990s, and now are coming of
age. The vast majority is inevitably influenced by the dominant Canadian
culture and behavioural patterns. Many parents have no problem with this and
adopt a healthy mix of broader cultural practices and those of their own. A
growing number of families, frustrated by the difficult conditions of life and
influenced by imported orthodox Imams, however, venture the impossible task of
replicating their past way of life in their country of origin. They try to
force their own “choices” on their children. Many of these young Canadians, particularly
young girls and women, live a double life and have to hide their true feelings
and submit to their parents’ imposition.

Aqsa Pervez
shed the mask of compliance with the Muslim womanhood her father wanted her to
wear, hence the harshest imaginable punishment in his hands.

The Canadian
society and public policy makers urgently need to understand and appreciate the
remarkable cultural diversity of the people who come from Muslim-majority
countries and their divergent views about Islamic traditions and degrees of
their religiosity and secularism. Islam itself has had different readings from
almost the very beginning with a strict and rigid literalist reading on the one
hand and a rationalist interpretive reading on the other. For centuries the latter
was the dominant perspective for the vast majority of Muslims. It is only in
recent decades that political and economic failures, imperialist policies
towards Muslim-majority societies, authoritarianism, and the unresolved
Palestinian issues, have given prominence to the rigid totalitarian
ultra-conservative Islam.

Taking this
voice as the voice of Muslims is a fatal mistake with dire consequences. Worse,
wittingly or unwittingly, bowing to their demands in the name of respecting
their cultural heritage is to give up on principles of citizens’ equality
before the law and the hard-won norms of women’s rights. Still worse,
tip-toeing around harmful cultural practices as some left and feminists are
doing is tolerating for Others what is intolerable to “us.” It promotes
patriarchal control over women who have had a misfortune of not being born
white and Western. It is to deny the agency of millions of women (and men) who
in all Muslim societies, without exception, have launched the most remarkable
challenge to the misogynist, conservative interpretation of Islamic legal and
moral traditions. Abandoning one’s racist gaze of national and cultural
superiority could be done without adopting a hands-off approach.

All levels of
government in Canada need to recognize these facts and abandon their habit of
listening only to the most conservative voices within the large Muslim
population. Family could be, and often is the site of most serious repression,
and violation of rights in this “private” domain often occurs with active
participation of mothers.

Government’s
policy in this and similar cases is very important as it should be both
punitive and educational. Its firm stand will show what is not tolerated and
tolerable in this country, regardless of what sacred cultural and religious
values are at issue. It also sends a strong message to family members, Muslim
preachers, and those community organizations that support zealotry, about the
consequence of their acquiescence, preaching and advocacy.

Haideh Moghissi
is Professor of Sociology and Women’s Study at York University, and the author
of Feminism and Islamic Fundamentalism and the editor of three volume
reference Women and Islam

Shahrzad Mojab,
is Professor and Director of Women and Gender Studies Institute at the University
of Toronto, and the co-editor of Violence in the Name of Honour: Theoretical
and PoliticalChallenges